Detailed Biography
Marchenko was born in Barabinsk, in Western Siberia, in 1938. His parents were illiterate railway workers (his father, Tikon Akhimovich, was a locomotive fireman, and his mother was a station cleaner). His grandfather was a peasant, who had been shot by Kolchak. He had two brothers, one of whom died very young.
He left school after only 8 years, two short of the normal full secondary education. He then joined the Komsomol, and became a shift foreman on a drilling gang. The gang travelled around Siberia, and on a job at the Karaganda power station in 1958 he ran into trouble. Some exiled Chechens began a fight with some of the Russian workers in the hostel where Marchenko was staying; after the fight was over, and most of the combatants had left, the police arrested everyone left in the hostel, innocent and guilty alike, and they were all sent to the Karaganda labour camps after a perfunctory trial.
Read more about this topic: Anatoly Marchenko
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